Archive List

Though it won't be an immediate help to those Colorado River runners beached at Lees Ferry by the shutdown of the National Park System, the National Park Service will refund their permit fees and give them a choice of launch dates in the years to come.

As the government shutdown drags into its second week, there are increasing risks of vandalism in the National Park System and possibly even poaching, according to past National Park Service personnel.

In order to better track sea-level rise along the East Coast and the related impacts, National Park Service researchers have been building a database of habitat, vegetation, and erosional processes in the agency's National Capital Region.

It's not unusual for find piles of stones marking the way for trails across open terrain in mountains, deserts and terrain otherwise devoid of easily recognizable landmarks, but these "cairns" can evoke a surprising amount of controversy both in an out of national parks. Sometimes, however, what appears to be a cairn is actually instead an item of historic interest.

Almost a decade after a ranger who couldn't believe a billionaire had been given the OK to cut down trees in a scenic easement along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park landed in administrative purgatory, his case has been settled.

Seventy-five years ago, in June, 1938, Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the bill creating Olympic National Park. With this act Americans embarked on something new in land conservation: creating a wilderness preserve large enough to protect intact old-growth forest communities and the hosts of forest-dependent wildlife they contained.

The following ode making the rounds has its origin in canyon country, which makes sense, for that was Ed Abbey's favorite country. Hopefully, in the very, very near future, it will just be a literary part of the government shutdown's history.

As the partial shutdown of the federal government moved past its third day, the National Park System remained closed, but news surrounding the parks didn't end. A glance around the system shows hard times for lodging concessions, a particularly outspoken congressman, and ongoing energy production in some parks.

Google Maps has become a useful electronic option to paper maps for many people, and one feature of that site—"Street View"—allows users to see a ground-level, 360 degree photographic view of many locations around the world. Now that service is adding parts of some national parks, including the Grand Canyon and even one rather surprising location that lies beneath the ground.

A California congressman is pushing legislation that would turn aside federal environmental laws to allow for the salvage of timber burned by the Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park and the adjacent Stanislaus National Forest.

Eighty years is a long time to operate a business in the same location, and when your lease isn't renewed, well, it can knock you off your feet. That must have been the feeling at the Acadia Corp. when informed they lost their contract at Acadia National Park.

The Albright Visitor Center in Yellowstone National Park is housed in one of the old buildings built when the military occupied the park in the very early 1900s. As such, engineers didn't think much about earthquakes.

Salmon fisheries seem to be quickly rebuilding along the Elwha River drainage below Olympic National Park in the wake of efforts to restore the river, as thousands of Chinook salmon have been counted in the river and its tributaries.

Despite long odds, searchers continued looking Wednesday for an elderly woman missing in Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. The body of her companion was found last week, four days after they were reported missing.

There are the obvious impacts tied to the closure of the National Park System due to the partial government shutdown: guests forced to leave the parks, gateway communities losing business, concessions operations in flux.

A refillable water bottle can save you a lot of money over the course of a year as compared to the cost of buying multiple throw-away plastic bottles, and there are plenty of choices in the marketplace. If you'd like a bottle that's durable, easy to clean, easy to open with one hand and able to keep your water cold for hours, the Thermos Hydration Bottle is a great choice.

Once-in-a-lifetime trips to majestic places such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone crumbled Tuesday as Congress's failure to avert a shutdown of the federal government interrupted countless vacation plans as closure gates came down across the National Park System.

For the most part, a visit to Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, is going to be either for the sport fishing or the bear photography. Usually, not much is mentioned regarding landscape photography within the park. That being said, there *are* all sorts of landscape photo ops waiting to be captured within that amazing place.

Over the years the National Park Service has developed quite an array of maps for use in park publications and exhibits, and you can access them on a link tucked away on the NPS website. If you're planning a park visit or just enjoy looking at maps, you'll find plenty of material at a link called "Find A National Park Service Map."

It's no doubt a coincidence, but just days after the National Trust for Historic Preservation suggested the National Park Service lease out some of its historic structures as a way to preserve them, Valley Forge National Historical Park officials are trying to do just that.